Sexton Blake: The Man I Killed - Rex Hardinge

Continuing to read my way through the anthology SEXTON BLAKE WINS, the next story is the novella “The Man I Killed” by Rex Hardinge. That’s a familiar name to Blake fans, but it’s the first thing I’ve read by Hardinge and I really liked it.

Originally published in the July 8, 1933 issue of DETECTIVE WEEKLY, “The Man I Killed” is the first Blake story I’ve encountered that’s written in first person. It’s certainly the first one I’ve read from the point of view of the killer! So this is, of necessity, an inverted mystery where the reader knows the identity of the murderer all along, and the appeal lies in watching how Sexton Blake figures it out.

But after Hardinge shows us how sports journalist Matt King murders a wealthy toymaker named Brandt and then sets up an alibi using his old friend Sexton Blake himself, the story takes some unexpected twists. In fact, considerably more is going on than Hardinge reveals to us at first. As the story races on with several excellent action scenes and plenty of suspense, more and more layers of the plot are peeled away until the final outcome was satisfyingly different from what I thought it might be.

A couple of minor quibbles: At one point, a character impersonates Sexton Blake with a degree of success that’s much too great to be believed. And some of the late twists, while effective, come from pretty far out in left field. However, without them the story’s impact would be lessened, and hey, miraculous disguises are accepted plot devices in popular fiction, right?

Neither of those things keep “The Man I Killed” from being the best story I’ve read so far in this anthology, as well as one of the best Sexton Blake stories I’ve read, period. I’ll definitely read more by Hardinge.

Note: The scan above is from Mark Hodder's invaluable website Blakiana. If you're a Sexton Blake fan and haven't checked it out, you need to immediately. But be prepared to be immersed there for hours because it's compulsive reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, Fall 1944

I don’t own a copy of this pulp, but I recently read the e-book version of it published by Radio Archives. I don’t know who painted the cover. Rudolph Belarski did a lot of covers for THRILLING MYSTERY during this era, but I don’t know Belarski’s work well enough to say one way or the other. THRILLING MYSTERY was long past its Weird Menace days by 1944, but this cover looks like it could have graced a Weird Menace pulp.

Instead, by this time THRILLING MYSTERY was more of a regular detective pulp. The lead novella in this issue, “Monarchs of Murder” by C.K.M. Scanlon, is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The protagonist is Rex Parker, ace crime reporter for the New York Comet, who is also known as an amateur sleuth. It just so happens that Rex Parker was also the star of the lead novels in the pulp THE MASKED DETECTIVE, which ran from Fall 1940 through Spring 1943 for a total of twelve quarterly issues. Parker was also known as the Masked Detective in those stories, a secret identity known only to his girlfriend, fellow reporter Winnie Bligh, and his police contact, Detective Sergeant Gleason. Years ago, I read several of those Masked Detective stories that were reprinted by Tom Johnson’s Fading Shadows imprint and enjoyed all of them. I’m convinced “Monarchs of Murder” was written as a Masked Detective story, got orphaned when that pulp was canceled, and was rewritten to remove all the references to Rex Parker’s alter ego, which leads to one particularly goofy scene in which Parker dons a pair of goggles to conceal his identity, when he normally would have been wearing his mask in the original series.

The second thing I find interesting about “Monarchs of Murder” is that its authorship has been attributed to my old editor and mentor Sam Merwin Jr., who wrote at least three of the Masked Detective stories in that magazine’s run. (The main author was Norman Daniels, who wrote at least five of the original novels and probably created the character. The others were split up among Merwin, Robert Sidney Bowen, Laurence Donovan, and G.T. Fleming-Roberts.) Merwin was a consistently good writer, although he’s probably best remembered these days for his stints as the editor of various science fiction and mystery magazines. “Monarchs of Murder” finds Rex Parker battling a gang of Fifth Columnist saboteurs targeting the oil and gas industry, but the more Parker investigates, the more it appears something else may be going on. There’s plenty of action as Parker and Winnie are captured by the bad guys several different times and have to escape almost certain death. The plot moves along nicely, the clues are planted in a fair manner, and overall, this is an entertaining and satisfying wartime mystery yarn.

Next up is a novelette by an author I’ve long admired, Robert Bloch. At first glance, “Death is a Vampire” seems like it could have appeared in a Weird Menace pulp. The narrator/protagonist is a reporter, Dave Kirby, and the plot revolves around a spooky-looking house, a sinister guy with a vaguely European name (Igor Petroff), some art treasures, a beautiful blonde, a lawyer and a doctor who may be up to no good, and a supposed vampire running around killing people. But by the time the narrator makes a reference to the movie The Cat and the Canary, it’s pretty obvious that this is a prose version of a Bob Hope movie, with the wisecracking, somewhat cowardly reporter being written by Bloch with Hope in mind. It’s also a very entertaining story, a minor entry in Bloch’s career but a heck of a lot of fun. It was reprinted in the anthology TOUGH GUYS & DANGEROUS DAMES, used copies of which can be found pretty easily and inexpensively.

I think of Donald Bayne Hobart as a Western pulpster, but he wrote a lot of detective fiction, too, including nearly two dozen stories featuring private eye Mugs Kelly that ran in various Thrilling Group detective pulps. “Murder After Lunch” is a Mugs Kelly short story published in this issue, and it’s about first-person narrator Mugs returning to his office after lunch one day to find a dead guy sitting in his chair. Moments later, another guy appears to accuse him of the murder. The cops arrive, Mugs explains (in a pretty bland fashion) who really killed the victim, the end. This story went down easily enough due to Hobart’s veteran storytelling skills, but it sure wasn’t very filling.

“The Killer Was Careful” is a short-short by a forgotten pulpster named John X. Brown, who did only a few detective and air-war stories. It’s about a mild-mannered accountant who uncharacteristically murders a client and steals a bundle of cash and then has to worry about being caught. It’s the kind of twist ending “biter bit” story that would be popular in ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE a couple of decades later. I’m not a big fan of those unless they’re really well-done, and this one is just okay.

The issue wraps up with “The Spell of Death”, narrated by insurance investigator Dick Ames, who is on the trail of an embezzler when murder literally falls in his lap. It’s not a bad yarn, with what should have been an obvious clue to the murderer’s identity, but I overlooked it anyway. The author is A. Boyd Correll, a forgotten pulpster who wrote a couple of dozen detective stories for various pulps.

I enjoyed this issue. The stories by Merwin and Bloch are the stand-outs, with the others being okay but forgettable, but overall, it’s a nice, easy, entertaining read, just the sort of thing I need sometimes.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine, December 16, 1933

I don't own this issue. The scan is from the Fictionmags Index. I don't know who painted this WESTERN STORY cover, but it's very evocative and I like it. It looks like there might be a little bit of a signature in the bottom right but not enough to make out. There's a strong line-up of authors inside: Max Brand (with part of a Silvertip serial; I'm sure it was published as a novel with a different title, but I don't know which one), Francis Thayer Hobson as Peter Field (with the final part of the serialization of OUTLAWS THREE, the first Powder Valley novel; it was published in hardback by William Morrow in January 1934, and I didn't know it had been serialized previously; another note of interest is that Hobson's wife, Laura Z. Hobson, was an uncredited collaborator on this novel, as well as the next one in the series, GRINGO GUNS), the great W.C. Tuttle, WESTERN STORY regular contributor Robert Ormond Case, and forgotten pulpsters Joseph F. Hook, Carlos St. Clair (really Carolyn St. Clair King), and Stanley Hofflund. Appears to be an issue well worth reading.

The Green Lama: The Case of the Crimson Hand - Richard Foster (Kendall Foster Crossen)

The subject of the Green Lama came up in the comments of last weekend’s post about a science fiction pulp containing a story by Kendall Foster Crossen, who wrote the Green Lama series under the pseudonym Richard Foster. That reminded me that several years ago, I started reading the first Green Lama story but set it aside pretty quickly since it just wasn’t connecting with me. I’ve been meaning to give it another try because I know that often in those cases, the fault lies more with the mood I’m in, rather than the story itself. Since the subject came up, and since I own all three Altus Press volumes reprinting the entire series, I figured now was as good a time as any.

The first volume kicks off with the usual informative and entertaining introduction by Will Murray, which in this case explains how Crossen, who was editing DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY at the time, was asked by his bosses at Munsey to create a new series character for DOUBLE DETECTIVE, a pulp that wasn’t doing particularly well. Crossen came up with the Green Lama, inspired partially by The Shadow and partially by a couple of recent books about Eastern mysticism.

The Green Lama is actually wealthy Jethro Dumont, who isn’t the usual bored socialite or playboy who turns to fighting crime. He’s kind of an egghead, actually, who has made extensive studies of medicine, science, and Eastern philosophies and religions. On a trip to Tibet, he converts to Buddhism and becomes a monk, but no sooner has he returned to the United States than he witnesses a gangland killing in which several innocents are slain. Realizing that the police aren’t going to do anything about this, he decides to fight crime himself, using his own natural skills and the tricks he’s learned in the Far East. He doesn’t kill, but he electrifies himself by drinking radioactive salts dissolved in water, so that he can shock crooks with a mere touch, paralyzing them or knocking them out, making them blind or mute, all depending on where he presses his finger.

Yep, you read that right, he turns himself temporarily radioactive, lurks around in the shadows, and chants his catchphrase, “Om! Ma-ni pad-me hum!” Crossen, who footnotes the stories extensively, translates that at one point, but I don’t remember what it really means and I’m too lazy to look it up. It sounds cool and probably strikes fear into the hearts of criminals, that’s all I know.

The first Green Lama novella (pretty close to actual novel length, in fact) appears in the April 1940 issue of DOUBLE DETECTIVE. Crossen entitled it ”The Case of the Crimson Hand”, but it was retitled “The Green Lama” when it appeared in the pulp. The Altus Press reprint restores the original title. The Crimson Hand is a gang leader who wears a mask and a crimson glove on one hand. He steals a new weapon from the doctor who invented it, a radioactive gas that produces a knock-out ray powerful enough to put an entire city to sleep when enough of the gas capsules are spread around. The Crimson Hand and his gang set off on a crime spree, looting Cleveland and announcing that they’re going to take over the entire country, or maybe even . . . the whole world!

Not if the Green Lama has anything to say about it, bub. Aided by reformed gangster Gary Brown, the Lama gets on the trail of the gang, fails to prevent them from looting Cleveland and kidnapping the inventor of the gas/ray, along with a beautiful blonde, but eventually tracks them to their hideout. The Green Lama may not kill anybody, but that doesn’t mean this story is lacking in action. In fact, it’s a veritable slaughter as the bad guys wipe out everybody who gets in their way. A couple of times, it looks like the Green Lama himself has met his doom, but we know better, don’t we?

Eventually, the Green Lama breaks up the gang and captures the Crimson Hand, who turns out to be exactly who you figured he was all along. He has one other helper along the way, a mysterious woman known only as Magga, who feeds him information and turns up in disguise to take an active hand in the adventure when needed.

This first story and the character of the Green Lama himself are so goofy, so over the top, even by pulp standards, that I have to believe Crossen had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he wrote it. I wonder if he expected the series to become as popular as it did, continuing for three years and fourteen novellas that spawned a comic book version, a radio show, and even talk about a TV series in the early days of television that never came about. I had no trouble reading “The Case of the Crimson Hand” this time and enjoyed it quite a bit. The action scenes are good, the pace really rockets along, and the Green Lama may be a little silly, but he’s an interesting character. I intend to read more about him. Whether I’ll ever get all the way through the series, who knows, but if you’re a pulp fan, the Green Lama is worth checking out. The first collection is available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

Dirty Tricks - Jamie Mason

Jamie Mason’s highly entertaining new Western series continues with DIRTY TRICKS, the second adventure of trickshot artist, card sharp, and undercover Pinkerton operative Jack Tricke. The year is 1858, and the Pinkertons are working for the United States government, keeping an eye on things in Arizona Territory. There’s plenty to keep an eye on, too, what with building tension between pro- and anti-slavery factions, rampaging Apaches, and a rogue Mexican general who might just try to turn the territory into his own little empire.

Tricke travels with the Hamlin & Crowe Medicine Show, a motley but colorful collection of eccentric characters led by Doc Hamlin, who is also an undercover Pinkerton operative. Before this adventure is over, all of them will be involved in foiling a scheme that could well affect the entire country, not just Arizona Territory.

Mason keeps the action moving along at a satisfying pace, and the long, climactic battle involving a train is great. (Most of you probably have realized by now that I have a fondness for train scenes.) Jack Tricke isn’t necessarily the most likable protagonist you’ll ever encounter—he’s definitely a rogue—but his character is evolving as he continues his assignment for the Pinkertons. In fact, the way the plot and all the characters are developing, I think it would be a good idea to read this series in order. Luckily, that’s very easy to do. The first book is available on Amazon here, and this second one is here. If you’re a Western fan and haven’t checked out this series yet, I think it’s well worth reading.

The Slaves of Cthulhu - Tony Richards

I was in the mood for something completely different from what I usually read, and I figured a novel that, from its description, sounded like a collaboration between F. Scott Fitzgerald and H.P. Lovecraft ought to do the trick.

As a matter of fact, the narrator of THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU mentions Fitzgerald and a couple of his novels, and Lovecraft makes an amusing cameo appearance as a character when the narrator pays a visit to Providence, Rhode Island.

THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU is set in the summer and fall of 1923. The narrator/protagonist is Jay Sinclair, heir to the Sinclair diamond fortune, who is tired of being a wealthy young playboy and wants to do something worthwhile with his life. So he decides to become a novelist (there’s the Fitzgerald connection) and rents an isolated house on a lonely island off the coast to have a place to write undisturbed. Only, as you might guess, he winds up being disturbed. Boy, does he.

Nearby is the sinister-looking mansion of notorious libertine and poetess Anastasia Gorsting, who dropped out of public view several years earlier. Anastasia has an occasional party at which the dull, reclusive, and odd-looking inhabitants of the local village gather and carry on in crazed fashion. Strange lights also emanate from Anastasia’s mansion, and Jay hears indecipherable shouts coming from these gatherings. An old friend of Jay’s comes to visit him and seemingly falls under Anastasia’s spell. Jay also meets Anastasia’s beautiful but strange daughter.

Look, I’m no Lovecraft expert, as I’ve mentioned many times in the past, but it seems pretty obvious what’s going on here. And for the most part, it is. However, author Tony Richards does spring a nice twist about three-fourths of the way through the book that I didn’t see coming. It worked well for me, and do did the book overall, although I do have a few quibbles.

The first of those is that some of the words and phrases Richards uses just seem too modern for a tale set in 1923. There aren’t very many of these, but when they cropped up, they knocked me out of the story for a moment. There’s also a continuity glitch where a character has one eye, then two, then one again. That’s a pretty minor deal, too, and it’s a mistake I’ve made myself, but again, it disrupted the flow of things.

My obsessive carping aside, I really enjoyed THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU. Richards keeps things moving along at a very nice pace, the writing does a fine job of capturing the Jazz Age feel (with those minor exceptions mentioned above), and Jay Sinclair is a likable protagonist who at least tries to battle against overwhelming odds. No, this isn’t quite the Gatsby vs. Cthulhu mash-up I thought it might be, but that’s probably a good thing. If you’re in the mood for an entertaining horror yarn, I can certainly recommend this one. It’s available in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon. I intend to read more by Tony Richards.

Now, somebody needs to write THE ELDER GODS ALSO RISE. Jake Barnes vs. Cthulhu in Paris. The running of the shoggoths in Pamplona. I can see it now . . .

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Space Stories, December 1952

I've never seen an Earle Bergey cover I didn't like. This is a nice one on this issue of SPACE STORIES, the least successful (five issues) of the SF pulps from the Thrilling Group. Inside are stories by Jack Vance, Kendall Foster Crossen, William Morrison (Joseph Samachson, the guy who created the Martian Manhunter for DC Comics), and little known writers Robert Zacks and Phyllis Sterling Smith. If you want to read this issue, you can find the whole thing here. The other four issues of SPACE STORIES' short run can be found on the Internet Archive, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The cover art is probably by Sam Cherry, although I’m not a hundred percent convinced of that. It’s a nice cover, no matter who painted it. That’s my copy in the scan.

For more than a decade, the stories about Texas Ranger Walt Slade were one of the regular series in THRILLING WESTERN. A. Leslie Scott, under the pseudonym Bradford Scott, wrote more than 70 yarns about Slade, who was also known as El Halcon (The Hawk) and was reputed to be an outlaw, although he was actually an undercover Texas Ranger. “Trail From Yesterday”, the Slade novelette in this issue, is the final pulp story in the series, although as most if not all of you know, a few years later Scott began a series of paperback original novels featuring the character that ran for even longer.

This is an excellent tale for Slade to go out on, as far as his pulp run. Most of the time, these stories find Slade chasing outlaws in the rangelands of West Texas or the brush country of South Texas. “Trail From Yesterday” begins in Dallas (a far different place in the 1880s from what it is today) and the trail of a famous Texas owlhoot was believed to be dead leads Slade to the treacherous swamplands of East Texas, with its dangers of snakes, gators, and quicksand. The plot involves smuggling, gun-running, and a fortune in black opals. Scott packs almost enough material for a novel into this novelette, and he keeps the pace racing along with his usual vivid descriptions and several terrific shootouts. Slade also has a great sidekick in this one, Little Mose Wagner, a black former cowboy who’s too stove up to ride the range anymore, but he functions as Slade’s guide and assistant during this adventure in the swamp. This is great stuff, one of the best Walt Slade pulp yarns I’ve read. Scott was at the top of his game here.

The name Dabney Otis Collins is familiar to me from many Western pulp TOCs, but I don’t recall if I’ve ever read anything by him until now. His short story in this issue, “The Third Outlaw”, is about a fateful encounter between a lone cowboy and a gang of bank robbers on the run from the law as a blizzard is closing in. It’s a very suspenseful, surprisingly hardboiled tale, and I liked it a lot. I’m going to have to keep my eyes open for more by Collins.

The last time I read a Swap and Whopper story by Syl McDowell, I surprised myself by kind of liking it. The S&W story in this issue, “The Roaming Riders”, is pretty entertaining, too. It’s the usual goofy mix of wild circumstances, this time including a runaway pair of pants with all the duo’s money in it, a housing development in the desert of Southern California (this series is a modern-day Western), and an escaped elephant that’s supposed to be in a jungle movie. McDowell pulls it all together and makes it work fairly well. I got a few smiles out of this one. No outright chuckles that I can remember, but the series is growing on me.

Jim O’Mara was a pseudonym of Vernon Fluharty, who also wrote Westerns under the name Michael Carder. He was never all that prolific but he had a steady career producing well-written Westerns. His short story in this issue, “Collateral”, is a cattlemen vs. sodbusters yarn, written from the point of view of a former cowboy turned farmer. It’s a rather bleak yarn, but it has some nice action and a dark but still somewhat hopeful ending. I liked it quite a bit.

The same can’t be said of “Crop o’ Calamity” by Roger Dee (pseudonym of Roger D. Aycock), an author probably best remembered for his science fiction. This is another humorous Western about a couple of characters named Nosy Nolan and Doc Durgin, and it has something to do with escapees from a wild animal show. I don’t know for sure because it’s written in present tense (a style I don’t care for) and is dialect-heavy, and I just didn’t care for it at all, leading me to give up after a few pages. I may be warming up to Swap and Whopper after all these years, but not this one.

Much, much better is “Who’ll Ride With Me”, from the always dependable Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. This novelette is a reprint from the August 1947 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. It’s a cavalry vs. the Apaches yarn set in Arizona Territory, and as usual when Wheeler-Nicholson is writing about the military, there’s a real ring of authenticity to it. Some great action, although the ending isn’t quite as dramatic as it could have been. This story is also a good example of how the late Jon Tuska was wrong when he claimed that pulp editors wouldn’t allow romances between white and Hispanic characters. There’s a nicely handled romantic angle between the white cavalry lieutenant who’s the protagonist and the beautiful daughter of a Mexican rancher, and it’s written the same as any other romance in a Western pulp.

Harold F. Cruickshank wrote a lot of air war stories early in his pulp career and then became a prolific Western pulpster. I’ve never cared for his Pioneer Folk series that ran in RANGE RIDERS WESTERN. He has a stand-alone short story, “Prodigal Gun Thunder”, in this issue. It’s about a young man framed for being a horse thief who returns home from a stretch in prison to get to the bottom of things and settle the score. It’s a definite improvement over the other Western stories by Cruickshank that I’ve read, but there’s still something about his writing that just doesn’t resonate with me.

Harvey Ivison is a brand-new name to me. He wrote only a few stories for the pulps. His story “Thataway” is about a fugitive from the law who isn’t exactly what he appears to be. On the run from a posse, he shows up at a ranch where there’s a badly injured man, and unexpected things happen. This story is written with a very nice hardboiled tone that includes a few traces of dry humor. I really liked it and will have to be on the lookout for more stories by Harvey Ivison.

This issue concludes with a condensed novel, SCORPION by Will James. Is there a difference between a condensed novel and an abridged novel? I don’t know, but I feel like there should be. In a condensed novel, you take out words here and lines there, right? Whereas in an abridged novel, you take out entire scenes or sections. I have no idea which approach was taken in producing the version of SCORPION printed here. I remember reading James’s horse novel SMOKY when I was a kid, but that’s all I could tell you about it. SCORPION is a horse novel, too, and while I wanted to like it, page after page of horse-breaking narrative with no dialogue or actual plot did me in. I didn’t read this one, either. I just don’t have the time or patience I once did.

So the March 1951 issue of THRILLING WESTERN turns out to be a really mixed bag. The Walt Slade story by Scott is superb. The stories by Collins, O’Mara, Wheeler-Nicholson, and Ivison are all very good to excellent. The Swap and Whopper yarn by McDowell is okay, the Cruickshank story is readable but forgettable, and I didn’t finish the other two. As always, some of you might enjoy the stories I didn’t, so if you have this issue on your shelves, it’s worth taking down and sampling its contents.

D'Artagnan - H. Bedford-Jones

I’ve been a fan of the Three Musketeers for a long time, ever since I bought the Whitman edition of the novel when I was a kid and read it. I read the Classics Illustrated comic book version, too, and over the years I’ve watched and enjoyed most of the movie versions. I really liked the BBC TV series from a few years back and that’s how I see the characters in my head now.

So when I was in the mood to read a swashbuckler recently, I picked up D'ARTAGNAN, a pastiche sequel to the original, written by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones. It was published originally as a three-part serial in the pulp ADVENTURE in September and October of 1928 and reprinted several years ago by Altus Press.

Set approximately a year after the events in THE THREE MUSKETEERS, this novel is supposedly, according to Bedford-Jones, expanded from an unpublished manuscript by Alexandre Dumas. ADVENTURE plays that up on the cover of the issue containing the first installment of the serial. However, according to the Fictionmags Index, the only material by Dumas is a one-page excerpt from an article that has nothing to do with the book itself. No matter. D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are back, protecting Queen Anne of France from the schemes of the evil Cardinal Richelieu, although D’Artagnan does most of the heavy lifting in this book, befitting the title. Aramis is wounded and barely shows up. Athos and Porthos are busy with other things for most of the first half, although they play major roles in the second half of the book.

The plot, which involves various rings used for identification, missing documents and letters, wild coincidence after wild coincidence, ambushes, swordfights, disguises, and a mysterious child, is almost impossible to summarize. All the political intrigue is so complicated that I’m still not sure I understood everything that was going on. But again, no matter. D’Artagnan and his friends gallop hither and yon and save the day. That’s all that’s really important.

Bedford-Jones’ prose is a little more flowery than usual, which I suppose is understandable since he was writing a Dumas pastiche, and the plot, as I mentioned, is downright murky. But the action scenes, and there are a lot of them, are great. The final climactic battle, in which D’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos face overwhelming odds in a French tavern, is just terrific, the sort of thing that would have had me bouncing up and down in my chair in suspense and excitement if I’d read this when I was a kid.

The good stuff far outweighs the weaker bits in D’ARTAGNAN. I had a great time reading it. If you’re a Three Musketeers fan like me or just enjoy a good swashbuckler, you should definitely give it a try. It’s available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

The Trailer Park Girls - Glenn Canary

Like many of the soft-core novels of the mid-Sixties, THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS is very much a crime novel in disguise. Three young army veterans who met while in the service, Burton Stone, Jack Cannon, and Al Leeds, move in together in a trailer and decide, for various reasons, that they’re going to rob a department store in nearby Cleveland. But then they meet three young women who also live in the same trailer park, Sally Talent, Marianne Nirvell, and Fran Novak. Of course, each of the guys falls for one of the girls, and that winds up greatly complicating their holdup plan. Will they be able to carry out the robbery, or will love derail their criminal scheme?

Author Glenn Canary gives us a fairly simple plot in THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS, although there are a few twists and turns along the way. The first half of the book consists mostly of Canary filling in the backgrounds of his six main characters. He does an excellent job of it, too, but the book picks up steam as the robbery comes closer and closer. The last 40 or 50 pages of this novel are really suspenseful. I was going to put it aside and go to bed, but I couldn’t. Had to keep turning the pages to find out what was going to happen.

THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS was published originally in 1963 by Monarch Books, ostensibly a step up from Beacon, Nightstand, etc., even though the sort of books they all published was very similar. Glenn Canary had written two novels for Monarch before this one, and later, in the Seventies, he wrote two suspense novels for Pinnacle Books, plus some short stories for various mystery and men’s magazines during the Sixties. Not a prolific career, but based on THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS, he was a pretty darned good writer. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Black Gat Books has reprinted it in paperback and e-book editions, and if you like a good slice of life/crime novel, you definitely need to give this one a try. Recommended.